azure ad

The default token expiry in Azure AD for ADAL clients (using Modern Authentication) is 14 days for single factor and multi factor authentication users. This can stretch up to 90 days as long as the user does not change their password, and they do not go offline for longer than 14 days.

This means that clients using Outlook or Skype for Business can perform MFA once and then remain signed in using their access token for up to 90 days before being required to authenticate using MFA. As you can imagine, this is not an ideal situation for multi-factor authentication as a compromised account could be accessed through a rich client application with no MFA for up to 90 days.

Until recently, this could not be modified. However Microsoft released Configurable Token Lifetime as a Preview feature quite recently. This allows for various properties to be controlled, giving administrators more granular control over token refresh and enforcing a more secure MFA policy.

To do this, you need the Azure AD Preview PowerShell module. Install this by running the following from a PowerShell prompt:

Install-Module -Name AzureADPreview

Here is a sample policy I’ve configured which will change the MFA token lifetime to 12 hours. I’ve combined this with ADFS Claim Rules which only enforce MFA if the user is on the extranet and using particular applications:

Azure App Cloud Discovery is a seriously cool piece of technology. Being able to scan your entire computer estate for cloud SaaS applications in either a targeted, or catch-all manner can really help discover the ‘Shadow IT’ going on in your environment. Nowadays, users not having local admin rights won’t necessarily stop them from using cloud SaaS apps in any way which is going to increase their productivity. Users don’t generally think about the impact of using such applications, and the potential for data leakage.

But, as with lots of Microsoft’s other cloud technologies which are being launched left, right and centre at the moment, the Enterprise isn’t catered for as it might hope. Most Enterprise IT departments leverage some kind of web filtering, or proxying. This may be using transparent proxying, in which case you can count your blessings as Cloud App Discovery will work just fine. If you are explicitly defining a proxy in your internet settings, then you can get around that by adding particular registry keys. However if you are using a PAC file to control access to the internet, then unfortunately Cloud App Discovery will not work for you. This is a shame as it is, in my opinion, the best way to approach web proxying in an Enterprise, but that’s another story. From what I have heard, a feature is in the works which will allow you to configure Cloud App Discovery agents to log their findings to an internal data collector. This data collector can sit on a local server and then upload data to Azure on your behalf, which is a much more elegant solution to the problem of data collection from multiple machines. However as far as I know, this feature is not available yet. I’ll be keeping my ear to the ground and will let you know if this changes.

In the meantime, if you are desperate to get your data collection up and running in the meantime, you could change to explicitly defined proxying, and configure registry settings for your clients as per the following MS article:

Cloud App Discovery is a feature of Azure Active Directory Premium, a toolkit designed to take your Azure Active Directory to new, cloudier heights. Azure AD Premium can be bought standalone, or comes bundled with the Enterprise Mobility Suite. I would highly recommend it to Office 365 customers as it can give you and your users some great new features which can help make your Azure AD the best it can be!